


all the things that we do (to pass the time between the wars)

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [21]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 09:54:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28349487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Holly contemplates the facts as they perceive them.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & The Radiance
Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957039
Comments: 20
Kudos: 32





	all the things that we do (to pass the time between the wars)

**Author's Note:**

> **TL;DR: This is a fic about boundary violation, non-literal assault, and attempted literal assault. The note below discusses this in detail. This topic will be touched on again in less detail later in the series, but this fic is not necessary reading.**
> 
> Holly and the Radiance's forced body-sharing was a non-consensual, boundary-violating clusterfuck of a mindrape in and of itself. Neither of them were the instigator of the experience (that would be TPK) but they both perceived the other as the aggressor, not inaccurately.
> 
> In the canonical "Dream No More" ending, Holly sexually assaults the Radiance. This is canon. This does not happen in this series, as Holly's shade never entered the Dream Realm, but this is something they intended to do, and discuss intending to do in this fic.
> 
> There is no explicit sexual terminology, but the fic does contain violent language and allusions to rape, both literal and non-literal.
> 
> If this isn't something you want to read, don't read it. There will be a summary in the notes of the fic to follow.

Holly has no memory of ‘gentle’.

They remember the things that make up gentleness, individually. They remember warmth, softness, weight, quiet. They remember approval. They remember being tended to; impersonally, brusquely, but  _ tended _ .

They do not remember anything, any singular experience, that they would call  _ gentle. _

Their Father was not gentle. His constructs were not gentle. The Five Knights were not gentle. Their mother was not gentle.

The Radiance was not gentle.

Holly is not gentle. They do not know gentleness and they do not want it. It isn’t owed to them, nor do they owe it to anyone else. Gentle is for families. Gentle is for bugs that can appreciate it. Gentle is not for Vessels.

And yet, and yet, before Ghost bounded off to do whatever it was they were going to do to help with the ‘nesting’ that’s apparently happening, they turned to Tiso, who was staying behind, and signed:  _ be gentle with them. _

A petting motion in the air, then a scooping-inward motion with both hands, then one claw pointed at Holly.

_ Be gentle with them. _

There’s an ache knotted up in Holly’s chest, and it has nothing to do with the wounds that take up most of their abdomen. It started on the sign  _ gentle _ and it hasn’t gone away since.

Because they  _ want _ gentleness. They want Quirrel’s hand cupping their face and Hornet’s smooth-toned reassurance, and Ghost folding Holly’s thin hand in both of their chubby ones. They want blankets, and the scarf that Tiso’s making, and someone to tell them that they’re doing well even though they aren’t  _ doing _ anything, just lying there resting.

They want it. They  _ crave _ it. They want their other arm back just so they can grab hold of all that they’re offered with both hands and  _ squeeze _ until it’s wrung dry.

It makes them feel  _ sick _ to admit that, swollen with their ill-gotten thoughts, as though tumors of infection are bubbling under their carapace again, like they’re a rotten fruit about to split and gush and make a mess.

Holly knows it’s twisted and greedy of them, to bask in what they haven’t earned, to glut themselves on affection that would be better spent on bugs that deserved it, who didn’t fail every task allotted to them.

They didn’t land a single blow on the Radiance. They didn’t get to  _ try. _

She didn’t even die.

They can feel it in the back of their throat—their throat, that was once a solid mass, now pitted with veins of infection, gaping wide enough to let her scream through them—that she’s alive. The Light branded onto Holly’s insides didn’t fade when the Infection did.

They could have helped, if they’d just  _ died _ when they were supposed to.

She told them once, early enough that they still had both arms but late enough that conversation was no longer a battleground, that they would not be able to kill her. 

They had been shaped out of Void to stand equal and opposite to the Light—unable to kill or be killed unless they died together.

_ You were never a solution, _ they remember her saying.  _ The Wyrm always knew that. You’re a stopgap. _

And they had started to plan.

It had been an effort to keep their… thoughts… hidden from her, to learn more about the Light without exposing their intent to harm. The mind was her realm, and even half-crushed beneath the Void, she was still far more powerful than them.

But for all that she was not gentle, for all that she was furious, for all that her Light carved deep, seeping grooves into Holly’s soul, the Radiance still saw Holly as a child.

So she told them stories. She spun them, like the beasts in Deepnest spun their webs, of her people, of their history and their holidays. Who she had been to them, what Hallownest had been, the tales she had watched unfold within it. 

Holly had listened. They reacted in the right places, even allowed her to teach them the signed language in order for them to respond. They had already failed—they had a mind, they were willful; what could a voice rob from them that they had not already lost?

So they learned, and listened, and began to ask questions.

It took time. The gestures were clumsy, the syntax unmalleable. It wasn’t like wielding a nail, or their soul, or the Void—as a weapon, it was ill-formed.

At least they could be certain that their Father was right on that count—they were not meant to speak, not in any capacity.

Even when they were accurate, they weren’t always successful. Sometimes their questions ignited her fury, though they didn’t always understand why.

But they learned. They were careful, and methodical, as their Father had taught them, bringing themselves to bear against their problem as many times as was necessary to succeed.

Their problem, their obstacle, sharp as any spear-point and grating as any saw-blade, was how they were going to reach her.

They learned, in order:

The Radiance before them wasn’t her—just a representation, for the sake of their conversations. For as long as she was inside them, she couldn’t establish herself fully, but she couldn’t be harmed, either.

She wouldn’t take a physical form, not even if she was freed. To reassemble herself that way would take more effort than she would have the strength for. If she was freed, she would flee to the Dream Realm, where she could create her own power.

A soul could not walk the Dream Realm uninvited.

_ That’s why it hurts us, _ she had said.  _ We don’t want this. _

( _ I want this _ , Holly had signed, automatically, and the stories had stopped for the day.)

A soul couldn’t walk the Dream Realm uninvited.

A  _ soul _ couldn’t.

Holly was only half soul, and their soul could be split from their body.

It wouldn’t even be difficult. 

They just had to die.

After all that—after all the time they spent, after all that they had planned to sacrifice, after they  _ stabbed  _ themself to ensure they would die in time to reach the Dream Realm, it  _ hadn’t worked. _

Because they didn’t die.

They didn’t die, and she didn’t die.

They aren’t angry at their sister, or at Quirrel and Tiso. They didn’t know what they were interrupting. They didn’t know what they robbed Holly of. They still don’t, and with only one hand Holly doesn’t have the signs to explain it.

Sometimes, when their thoughts or their pain crests too high for them to see the other side, they comfort themself imagine tearing into the Radiance, repaying the wounds she left in them, recreating with their own hand the maw she tore into their throat. She could  _ really  _ scream then, with her own voice, instead of the one she forced from them.

They curl their fingers into the blanket wrapped around them.

They are not gentle, and for all their craving, they have never  _ asked _ for gentleness.

But in absence of recompense or success or nothingness, they’ll take it.


End file.
